For the record, and for those that missed the announcement, I will no longer be working on a teaching degree. After finishing my Associates Degree last month, and doing a lot of research, I have found that I will be better off in the long run staying in the IT field, and this job is in that field. I will be working with other developers on a scheduling system used primarily in the EMS field. I have met one of the developers already and though he is not as much of a geek as I am, it looks like we will work well together.

We will travel to Hudson on Monday, July 25th to tour the office (both old and new, they are moving soon which will be fun) and look at a place to stay. I have found an apartment in River Falls, 25 minutes away, that we can sublease for three months. During that time we will look for something suitable in Hudson and finally have our own place again in November.

With this new job I am just going to stop all the other stuff i have done to make money. No more blogs, web sites, hub posts, or anything else of the sort. I will work during the day and spend time with family and on hobbies during the evenings and weekends. It will be great to get back to a normal life again. Heck, I might even start posting here on a regular basis again!

In September, I will be going back to school to work on a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology. I am fortunate that 57 of my 62 earned credits will transfer, but I do have to take one extra math class for this new degree.

I have chosen a concentration in Multimedia and the Visual Arts. This will teach me skills I need to build the consumer facing side of web sites and other online communication. With a firm understanding and 20 years experience working on the server-side of things, the classes I will be taking should give me a well-rounded set of skills for the entire aspect of web sites and online communications.

I am both excited and just a bit nervous. Previously, I would be assigned two classes that each lasted nine weeks. This spread the work load out a little more. When I go back, it will be one class at a time in 5 weeks. Though I will only have to focus on one subject a time, the shorter time period and more advanced classes will likely mean more work for me. Oh well, it will be worth it.

I know in the past I said that I really wanted to teach, and that nothing will stand in my way, but I have to look at the facts. I know the IT world – I have lived in it for many years. I am comfortable here, and quite honestly, I am much more valuable to employers with the experience I already have.

Apparently we’ve been too busy with the day-to-day living of life to take the time to update this blog.  Or too busy with the changes to write about them, and then when things settle down it would slip our minds.  Who knows, all I know is that lots have changed in the last 7 months.

One of the first changes from the last blogs, was that Shane is not working for his former employer.  There was a parting of the ways due mainly to a misunderstanding.  Apparently the boss thought that as Shane’s employer he should be in control of when and IF Shane should have free time.  Our family plans didn’t apparently mean much to his idea of deadlines and launch dates, even when notified well in advance, or when it was the weekend.

With that change it became more difficult to complete the trailer in a timely fashion like we hoped.  One of the things that really needed completing before we could work on the interior was the roof.  Well, CraigsList helped us out there with finding the right sized trusses and a wonderful price  for them to redo the roof.  Unfortunately there was several rather heavy rain storms before we had a chance to start on the roof, and with other hold-ups as well we weren’t able to complete the roof soon enough.  What do I mean about not being able to complete it soon enough, well simply that things took too long and the interior became very heavily mold infested.  Too much so, for us to feel safe to complete the trailer or move in.  Therefore the project was abandoned.

In September we moved out of Karen’s.  Instead we moved in with Shane’s brother, Scott, and his wife, Charity.  So now we are living in Arcadia, WI.  We had thought/hoped that with Ashley Furniture and Golden Plump here in town, there might be job opportunities locally.  Unfortunately we are the wrong ages and have the wrong skill-sets for those employers apparently.

December 13, my cousin, Brandi Lynn Allen, was fatally injured in a car accident.  It’s hard to believe that such a bright young woman of only 19 is no longer with us.  She will be missed by many.

Allyssa made out well with Santa this year.  She received some Thomas the Tank things, TinkerBell items, a couple of dolls, and a few other things as well.  It took her about 30 minutes, I believe to open all her gifts and she enjoyed every minute of it, and then became busy playing with her new gifts.

Unfortunately the 26th we seemed to have a bit of a flu bug around the house.  Allyssa seemed to have it first, during the late night of the 23rd, but Shane and I seemed to have a bit of it on the 26th.

So how do you pay rent and put money aside?  Well, you either find the cheapest possible place to rent… or you try to buy a cheap trailer house.  To this end, we believe we have found something that could suit our purposes.  It’s an older trailer house, 1976 or 1977, a 14×70 with 3 bedrooms and 1 3/4 bath.  It’s very rough right now, but at the price we would be able to go in and make improvements before moving in.  Naturally we wouldn’t be able to make all the improvements we want right away, but enough to satisfy our immediate needs.  Then we would be able to move in and plan to make other changes over time.

If this works out not only would we have the space we need (including an office for Shane), we would also be able to put money aside for a down payment for a home in three years when Shane graduates.  Please wish us luck, we can use all the help we can find.

Allyssa is getting bigger and is really smart too! She knows the entire alphabet and can count to ten, though some days she needs a little coaxing to get through them all. She is also at that stage where she wants to be “naked”, well, except for a diaper, and refuses to wear clothes. She also refuses to sit on the potty so potty training is progressing very slowly, or not at all right now.

Her favorite movie right now is Cars. Well actually, it is Mater and the Ghostlight which is a bonus on the Cars DVD. I think I have seen that over 100 times already. It is kind of annoying too, because every time Mater breaks his headlight she has to scream out “he broke his light!” Oh well, she’s still the most wonderful part of my life right now.

The job market in the area is crap, and although there have been a couple of options, none of them have panned out. So, Laura and I have decided to use my knowledge to build a business. We are working now on a Business Plan and actually have about a half dozen customers already, so it just might work out. The trick will be to actually keep working towards that, and not playing games on Facebook (hint hint Laura).

Shoot, gotta get back to work now. In case you don’t hear from us in the next couple of months, just remember that it is NORMAL to for us to not update the blog, so things must be normal.

I’d like to say there won’t be a lot of posts for a couple of weeks with packing and moving and settling in, but a lack of posts seems to be the norm for this site. So get ready for this blog to be normal! Maybe once we are back and we have things to share we will post more. Then again, we will be sharing those things with the very same people who read this blog, so we may not feel a need to update. Geez, what is a person to do?

Currently I am not working, nor is Laura, except to build up our new business venture. Hey, we already have nearly a dozen clients so things are looking up. We will be focusing on the area around La Crosse, WI in the coming months, so if you know someone who wants a cheap web site, send them on over to $150 Sites, OK?

While we were out, we also purchased a Play Station 3.  We had talked about purchasing a Blue Ray player, but of the difference in price it made more sense to pick up the PS3.  While we purchased a second controller for it, we haven’t purchased any games for it yet.  We decided it made more sense to get a GameFly subscription and rent the games first.  We also have several PS2 games which we haven’t played since our PS2 died with a drive problem.

Besides all this, Shane recently introduced me to Mafia Wars on FaceBook.  And from there I’ve also seen Vampire Wars and Pirates: Rule the Caribbean!  I’ve found them to be rather addictive.  As you can see we now have plenty to play around here.

Thursday night comes around, and we are all ready to go grocery shopping. Just before we leave, Shane checks his account. The funds were NOT available. Talk about being rather frustrating! Perhaps it is a good thing that there isn’t a local branch of the bank we are having the problems with. This way it makes even more sense to change to a local bank. Now we just have to take the time to do so, with both our personal and business accounts.

First thing Friday morning though, we found the funds were available so we decided to go Friday night. We ended up with a late start getting out of the house. Since there is a Cinzzetti’s near the Whole Foods Market we were planning on shopping at, we decided to eat there then shop.  It’s never a good idea to grocery shop on an empty stomach.

Cinzzetti’s is a bit different that many Italian restaurants, it’s basically an Italian buffet, and it’s wonderful.  I highly recommend it to everyone.  When we finished eating, it was 8:50.  Our problem was that the grocery store closed at 9.  Nothing like everything conspiring against us, huh? Well luckily enough for us 3rd time was the charm.  We were able to actually get our groceries this afternoon.

Of course that isn’t the only thing we did this afternoon.  Much to Allyssa’s enjoyment we also squeezed in some time at Loose Park.  It’s one of her favorite places, since it has slides.  Of course, chasing Allyssa around the park makes enough exercise for mom and/or dad.  This picture was actually taken on Wednesday, the 1st.  But it still shows how much she enjoys the slides.

Oh, yeah, this time the move is to Kansas City, Missouri where I will be working with someone I have known and worked with for over 2 years. I will again be writing code and building web sites and promoting the weight loss program that I know works – still down about 25 pounds from the first run and getting started to do it again.

We have spent this past week at Laura’s dad’s home in Holmen, WI, catching up with family and taking care of things that needed to be taken care of here. This time we have a condo waiting for us when we get there, so I packed up the necessary items from storage yesterday and will drive down tomorrow morning. The condo is a perk from the employer so we don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a hotel room while we look for a place. It’s a small, 1 bedroom condo but it’s much larger then then hotel room we lived in for 6 weeks. It’s also close to shopping and entertainment so we’ll save money on driving everywhere.

Hopefully this one will be the one that lasts a while. As soon as we get settled we will share photos of our new digs and try to keep you updated as life continues for the Lambert clan. Now that we will be nearly 8 hours away from family and friends this blog will become an important lifeline to keep you all updated on the trials and tribulations of raising such a beautiful young lady.

We bought the car on August 4th, 2008, but due to an accident I had back in 2004 when I did not have insurance, I was unable to register the car until I paid the damage judgment against me. This started a search for the person I owed the money to. Ironically, the DMV nor the court systems could help me find him, and any old contact information I had was long outdated.

After nearly 3 months of trying to find him, I suddenly remembered where he had worked, and thought to call there to see if they had current contact information. Fortunately, he still worked there and he eventually contacted me back. Problem was, he wanted all the money up front before he would release the judgement. I worked it out through family and friends to be able to pay him the full amount, but informed him if he wanted his money he needed to meet me at the court house in La Crosse and sign the satisfaction of judgement. He was more than willing to do that. This is where the fun began!

I received the satisfaction of judgment on November 13th and called the DMV the following Monday. The yahoo that answered the phone told me that he sees the judgment is satisfied and that I now need to file SR-22 insurance and pay a $110 reinstatement fee. This really frustrated me because when I called the DMV back in October to find out what I needed to do, that person said nothing about insurance or a fee, nor did the notice the DMV sent me when I tried to register the vehicle. If I had known about the SR-22 requirement back in October, I would have done it. Turns out it only added about $25 to our policy – not bad.

Then today I called the DMV to make sure the SR-22 filing was on record, and was told it was, BUT, the satisfaction of judgement was not. I flew off the handle – yelling at this poor woman, Mary, who quickly calmed me down and told me what I needed to do. I scanned and emailed the satisfaction to her, and she immediately called me back to get the payment of only a $50 fee. The $110 the other yahoo mentioned included the $60 to reinstate my license, which I didn’t need to do today. She then transferred me to someone in the registration department who expedited the filing of the satisfaction, and told me we could get temporary plates so we could use the vehicle. FINALLY, someone at the DMV who knows what they are doing.

To make this long story short, now that you’ve waded through the whole thing, Laura made a trip with the van to River Falls to get our temporary plates and we can now drive our more fuel efficient vehicle again. So, for those wondering, we will be back home for Christmas, though we will once again spend Christmas Day here at home as a family.

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